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Exporting Lower Polygon Shapes
The 'Add lower polygon shapes' option is used for exporting lower detail shapes for hierarchical models. The low detail model system is basically a naming convention that is somewhat automated by this export option, however it is useful to know how it works. For each shape in a hierarchical model there are 9 slots for lower detail models with 1 being the highest detail (although lower than the full detail model), and 9 being the lowest. When the game draws detail level 2,say, of a model, it tries to use the level 2 shapes if they exist. If there aren't any level 2 shapes for a given position, then it will use a level 1 shape. If that doesn't exist then the full detail version of a shape will be used. The naming convention for the lower detail shapes is to stick 'Ln#' on the front of the name, where 'n' is a single digit. For example the level 2 detail model for a shape called 'head', would be called 'L2#head'.
To use the 'Add lower polygon shapes' option you will need to create a Max scene containing the lower polygon shapes. The lower detail shapes should be given the original names (eg 'head' rather than 'L2#head') . When you choose this export option, you will be asked to select the detail level and shape set that these shapes are for. The export process will then compare all of the shapes in the scene with the ones currently in the rif file, and export new shapes with the altered names for those that are different. When doing the export you don't have to have all of the shapes from the model in the scene (so you could just export a lower detail model for one leg ). Also any shapes that haven't changed won't be exported as lower detail shapes, so you shouldn't get unnecessary duplicates of shapes that don't change.
Note that you could just use the standard shape export, with the shapes renamed appropriately, if you preferred. However doing this will bypass the process that checks to see if the shapes are in fact different.
Currently there is no way to say that a given part of a model should use no shape whatsoever at low detail models.